Yesterday (08 June 2017) was my birthday and I decided that it was a time for new beginnings, to create a new chapter in my life. A lot of life changing events have happened since my birthday last year, I’ve been put into situations where I’ve been forced to sink or swim. I chose the latter, barely staying afloat though. It happened so fast. I woke up one morning and my whole life changed. There was nothing I could do about it.

This new chapter certainly doesn’t mean that life will be a breeze. There are still changes that I need to adjust to, there will still be lots of ups and downs but I’m on a journey to reclaim what I lost. My happiness.

“They tried to bury me but they didn’t realise I was a seed. ” – Dinos Christianpoulos

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not unto your own understanding.” – Proverbs 3:5

I’ve always remained steadfast in this scripture because I grew up knowing that God’s ways are not our ways. Sometimes life can be so turbulent that leaves one troubled spiritually, questioning your faith.

Recently I’ve been on an emotional rollercoaster. Everything snowballing into one big mess. I was ready to give up on life.

This blog was created for the purposes of chronicles of my life, so that I can hopefully help someone going through a similar journey. It’s been a month since I’ve started and I decided to reflect on my progress.

I realised that I have been neglecting my spiritual health. I’ve been infested with a troubling spirit of loneliness and self-doubt. It’s become toxic for my creativity, my passion, my zest for life. It’s eating away at my inspiration to pick up the pencil and draw again.

It’s time for a clean the wound and heal.

Each day I want to read my bible more, pray more often, reflect and meditate a lot more, protect my inner peace. Each day I want to challenge myself more. Each day I want to grow spiritually.

Again I say, I woke up one day and my life had changed. I’m still dealing with the aftermath of this ordeal.

I invested so much of myself into my job. I hardly had any time to unwind and relax. I always wanted to be on my A-game because that job meant that much to me. I needed to prove that I was worth it, that they were right in choosing me.

Things changed. My mental paradigm shifted. I tried throwing myself deeper into my work because a part of me was still angry at myself. However, I had also changed. The more I tried proving myself, the more I felt I was being criticised. I couldn’t handle it anymore.

Since I’ve left that job, I feel so empty. For a good year, my job was my life. It defined who I was. Now I feel like I don’t know who I am anymore. A psychologist asked me this question and I honestly started crying because I couldn’t answer. It was like my purpose had vanished.

Image credit: Google

I’m struggling to refind my purpose. It’s a battle each day because social media is saturated with people who seem to have found their purpose and flourishing.

“Art is more than just pictures. It’s an expression, an outlet for my emotions” – Me.

Image credit: @artbysildget Instagram

I’ve always loved drawing, especially cartoons. For a while I stopped though because the growing self-doubt and a low self-esteem held me back. I felt like my drawings weren’t good enough.

As I grew older, life became harder. I suddenly didn’t have time to do any of the things I had once loved to do. I had allowed myself to be consumed by my job until I was constantly tired and unmotivated. It took a traumatic ordeal to wake me up and rediscover my love for drawing amongst other thing passions.

Drawing wasn’t about whether I was good enough anymore. It was a way to escape the world and find my happiness.

In the beginning of 2016, I had just gotten a new job in a province away from home. I had successfully completed my honours degree the year before. Everything seemed to be going great. I was adjusting from being a student to a full time employee.

However, one day, I woke up and my life had changed.

Now I’m suffering with chronic depression, anxiety disorder and post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). When I started this blog, I felt optimistic about my recovery. I was hoping I could help someone who was going through a similar journey. Now I’m having trouble sleeping at night. I toss and turn. My brain is constantly thinking, buzzing. Those few moments I do get to sleep, I end up having nightmares about the person involved in my trauma. By the time, the sun rises, my body is exhausted from the lack of proper sleep, making it hard for me to function during the day. Leaving me depressed and feeling like Dracula.

I won’t lie, I’ve made some strides in dealing with the PTSD through the help of professional help, family and close friends. I’ve even started drawing again to distract myself. There were times when I would completely forget events, randomly lose my balance, suffer from insomnia. I went for CT scans and did an EEG. It was scary. Now I don’t tense up at the smallest of reminders of my trauma. However, there are still those triggers that retraumatise me. They open up old wounds. I thought by talking about it often enough that I’d have come to terms with it but I still haven’t. It still haunts me.

For me, life has become a cycle. There are moments where I’m in fine. I can laugh and joke with people. I feel hopeful. Then, in the middle of that laughter, depression sneak up on you or something/someone triggers the trauma. Being in that negative cycle feels like living in Hell. Each day feels too long and gloomy. You feel trapped, as if things will remain the same. You start becoming physically sick.

This is why I’ve passionately become an advocate for mental health awareness because I’m speaking from experience. I know how hard it can be. I know how hard it can be to speak up because you feel like you’re going to start boring people with your problems, or that they won’t understand.

“Live the dream the youth of ’76 died for”

June 16 is a special day for South Africans. It marks the day when the students in the Soweto townships revolted against the Bantu Education Act of 1953 and the decision the government in the Apartheid Era to make Afrikaans a medium of instruction for certain subjects in black schools.

Many students lost their lives fighting the racist educational policy that saw blacks receiving poor quality of education.

Today, 41 years later, I stand proud with two university degrees. A dream that the youth of ’76 died for. I’m thankful for their sacrifices.

However, not everyone is as fortunate as I was. We still have a long way to go as a nation. A lot of the current youth can’t afford to study. They’re still bound the chains of poverty. Studying at a higher institution of learning is still a luxury. We need to ensure that everyone gets an opportunity to study at these higher institutions of learning without the stress of finances. Movements like #FeesMustFall are testaments that their spirit lives on in us.

I hope in the next 41 years, we all can live the dream the youth of ’76 died for.

“I’m always the one who loves more, that’s my problem.”

I recently broke up with a guy and I found listening to Ciara’s I Bet. It got me thinking about my past relationships. I realised that I’ve definitely been the one to love more.

My first failed relationship started with my childhood sweetheart. I fell in love the day I first laid eyes on him. He was the new bad boy to move into the area where my gran stays. Every holiday I made sure I was at my gran’s just so that I could see him. I never had the courage to talk to him, I just stared at him at a distance. A few years later, he asked me out, I was over the moon. In fact, I can’t describe that feeling. My first love. Things were great for the first few years. I made sure his birthday’s were special, which happened to be the same day as Valentine’s Day. Every occasion was special. I was there financially and emotionally. I showed up for him.

However, he never reciprocated that kind of effort for me, but he always said the right things though. I was young and naive. So I just thought his bad boy reputation didn’t allow him to show affection. Boy, I was wrong. I was about to see flames.

He started withdrawing, I don’t even know when, how, or why. He’d go days, or even weeks, not talking to me. Again, I was young and naive. I started showing extra love, because I thought I was doing this relationship thing wrong. Nothing worked. This is when I should have called things off but silly me was deep in love.

Later, I found out that he was cheating. I met up with him and asked him calmly if he was cheating. I didn’t want to be those girls wildin’, throwing accusations without proof. His response was “pho, kunani?” (so what?). That response shattered my entire world. I stared at him dumbfounded, my mind spinning out of control. He was so nonchalant about everything. I don’t know how I managed to walk away without crying. The moment I was alone, I cried like there was no tomorrow. The guy I had loved for nearly eight years (dated for four of these eight years), was cheating on me and didn’t give a damn. I was shook. It was like there was a big sign that said “WELCOME TO REALITY”.

It took me months to recover but my self-esteem was never the same again. I still did this relationship thing wrong by always going the extra mile even when I saw the signs. I was hoping each time, that this time would be different. I was still hoping that the guy that I was in the relationship with, would appreciate and reciprocate the efforts. It never turned out that way. Kanti, where am I finding these guys? My self-esteem plummeted. I started believing I wasn’t good enough because of the way these guys acted. Well I just broke up with this guy, and guess what? I was still the one to always love more.

I’ve been working on my self-esteem but hey, I’ve yet to meet the one. The one will appreciate and reciprocate. The one who will love more, if not, equally. Until then, I think I need to take a break until I get this relationship thing right🙂. Heartbreak is real, and painful too man.

“Yeah, right now, it’s killing me ’cause now I have to find someone else when all I wanted was you” – Ciara | I Bet

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